Seeking After Gratitude

Now I crash again against the beachhead, a wave of compassion washing ashore. The dash to Mass was one that had me come up short so many days of the past weeks. I recall one day, especially, where I didn't hear the Gospel that day, but I did experience it. I grew bitter and uncharitable, all of it bitter fruit and without much mental or spiritual acuity. Again this happened today. The interesting truth about this?

God works with even that brokenness and lack of self worth and hardness of heart in the moment. He allows the hardness so that He can break our stony hearts and expand them for a greater capacity to love.

I knew once I came tumbling into the church one weekday evening, that, in spite of these setbacks of getting to Mass, I had made the right decision to press on. I recall those sonorous words of Fr. Trahan on 1 John 4:19. God does not love us for some sort of response. He loves us because we are lovable, and we should do the same.

I'm still working on this... but it makes each day worth living.

"The saints do not contemplate to know, but to love. They do not love for the sake of loving but for the love of Him whom they love. It is for the love of their first beloved, God, that they aspire to that very union with God that love demands whilst they love themselves only for Him. For them, the end of ends is not to bring exultation to their intellect and nature and thus stop at themselves. It is to do the will of Another, to contribute to the good of the Good. They do not seek their own soul. They lose it; they no longer possess it. If in entering into the mystery of Divine filiation and becoming something of God, they gain a transcendent personality, an independence and a liberty which nothing in the world approaches, it is by forgetting all else so that they do not live, but the Beloved lives in them."

— Jacques Maritain

The Married Philosopher

A good friend of mine has stated: "Men are either married or philosophers!"

What he fails to remember is that I know one married philosopher, and I very much think that both he and his wife will become saints because of it! 

But seriously... perhaps we ought to pray that they, like all married couples, will both understand better the philosophical beauty of Heaven as marriage consummated with God!

Ah! The objection of being only in the first stage! I am in the first stage still yet, trying to harmonize this philosophy to its proper pitch and timbre, too! But as the great composers know the notes before they are played or put to page, so too do we as lovers of an infinite God know that love must be harmonized both above and below for beauty to exist. And we do know that beauty exists because God exists and has so loved us (cf. 1 John 4:18-19)... So we love and must, therefore, strive to be perfect, "as [our] Heavenly Father is perfect!" (cf. Matthew 5:48)

Strike up the orchestra... Allow Him to show you the composition He has for you so beautiful that it quite literally is something you are willing to die for and offer your life for on behalf of your friends, of which there is no greater love (cf. John 15:13).

We must fight the good fight towards this perfection by God's grace in our lives through this high calling of life towards greater holiness in Him!

It is through all vocations that we are called to love both God and neighbor... selflessly. Marriage is but a focused magnifying glass that beams the light of Christ to another, so also is that vocation directed to compassionate procreation of a Domestic Church with Christ as her Head. It must be both above and below, for the sake of the children born below for Heaven above!

To Him be all honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.